RadFem is a Subculture - is the sex/gender distinction still being taught?

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

A couple of events in the last week have unsettled me.

First - I see that RadFem is now considered a (toxic) subculture on this university site

haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/radfems/

What worries me is not so much that they are critical, but that they get it so wrong.

Second, I got asked to do a survey by a young woman (girl) for a school project. The first question was 'what gender do you identify as?' I replied that I didn't identify as a gender, because gender was a set of stereotypes. Instead, I said, my sex was female. Dutifully she recorded me as 'non-binary'. With much arm-waving, I explained the second wave idea of the sex/gender distinction. She looked both confused and intrigued - she had 'never heard of that before' - sex, to her, was what one identified as. She looked quite bright - I hope she followed up. The survey was not about trans btw.

But really? Has the sex/gender distinction gone the way of the dinosaur in anything but radfem, gender critical, second wave thinking and teaching?

Oh FFS. That page is full of misinformation. The women never burned bra's, they just threw lingerie and high heels in a trash can. And furthermore, radical feminists are against essentialism and biological determinism. Sheez, where did these assholes get their information?

For the record, much of what is now GC theory and views on prostitution and porn came out of radical feminist theory. Way to shit shit on history. Did they ever actually read any books from 2nd wave feminist authors?

What’s happening in the US looks truly alarming from the other side of the Atlantic. History is being rewritten.

But I’m glad you had that conversation. Sounds like you might have sown a seed.

This is very disturbing. Full of falsehoods and unevidenced accusations (about doxxing, dead naming, 'gender essentialism'), no mention of the really groundbreaking radical feminist scholarship of the 1970s/80s (Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millett, Adrienne Rich), and of course, it's all about trans issues.

Makes me weep, especially as this seems to be a student-led project.

It seems to be rather uneducated about both sub-cultural theory and feminist history/theory!

The sad thing is that these young women will never have the life-affirming, inspirational, self-acceptance-endowing experience radical feminism can give them.

I'm not a radfem myself (some minor technical differences) but I've never, ever, ever found any spaces more fulfilling and nurturing for women than radfem spaces.

It's just awfully sad.

I'm not a radical feminist either. When I was a wee 'un cutting my teeth towards the end of the second wave the sex/gender distinction was a mainstay of feminism - everyone (even lib fems, who were considered the conservative older sisters) recognised it as a rational way of explaining women's oppression and the behaviour of men and women.

Just checked out the lecturer for the course they're doing
Ross [email protected]
I am an Associate Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College where I teach Deviance and Youth Subcultures, Sociological Theory, Men and Masculinities, and introductory sociology courses.
Aaaaaargh

I just looked him up on GoogleScholar - he does seem to have some second wave ideas about gender (for example, he talks about hegemonic masculinities and how subcultures can either/or reinforce or challenge these), but he totally buys into a grrrrlll power conceptualisation of women and femininity.

I think for most people sex and gender are interchangable words. I hear 'the opposite gender' a lot these days which makes my teeth itch. Forms for school, the drs any data gathering exercise always ask for gender not sex. I think they're seen as synonyms.

I get that on an administrative level. But on a deeper level I didn't get that the sex/gender distinction was passe.

I know, right? This seems like a distorted rewriting of the feminist canon.

Materialist, since you are on here, is Mary Daly considered a persona non grata in the US now? I think her Gyn/Ecology is also out of print (not sure, though), and wonder if it's because she was Janice Raymond's dissertation supervisor.

When did we start publishing people's awkward "what I learned on my summer holidays" essays on the internet?

(Answer - not much)

That is so badly written. Liberal feminists focus on white upper class women ? I’ve never seen that before, rather a niche group then ?
I can’t begin to tackle the gender stuff. Is the writer at university ?

That's not a university site, it says it isn't. It's presumably just some student essay. Jeez it's bad. So grateful i never published any of my own student writing...

When I got to "female gender" I had to stop reading. What the hell is that?

That is such a load of bollox. I should know. I was there in the 60s/70a (which I rather imagine he wasn't).

Most university students are quite dim these days. Hopefully they improve with age but from what I gather in the British culture they merely become more conservative with age. There was a twit shamelessly handing out phalplets with communist iconography on my campus the other week. I blame the education system. They know that swastikas are bad but they aren’t taught in he reasoning skills to see how the hammer and sickle is analogous.

Cheers, Materialist - came across an article a few days ago which argued that Daly engaged with Lorde, and understood her criticisms, even if she never said so publicly.

I haven't read Gyn/Ecology so cannot say if the criticism is justified or if Daly was indeed a racist. Funny, though, that Carl Schmitt, a colossal anti-semite and an apologist for Nazi foreign policy, is still so revered by academics.

Even Heidegger is 'allowed' these days ...